Newsgroups: rec.arts.int-fiction
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From: uq775@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Roger Carbol)
Subject: Who am I?
Message-ID: <1996Mar27.001206.17973@freenet.victoria.bc.ca>
Sender: news@freenet.victoria.bc.ca (News Manager)
Reply-To: uq775@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA (Roger Carbol)
Organization: The Victoria Freenet Association (VIFA), Victoria, B.C., Canada
Date: Wed, 27 Mar 1996 00:12:06 GMT
Lines: 38


In the one of the latest discussions, an interesting topic
was brought up as a bit of a sidebar.  It's a personal
peeve of mine, so I'd thought I'd expand on it.
 
It deals with the whole issue of player knowledge of the
protagonist, essentially.  Almost every I-F I know of starts
off with something like "You wake up..."
 
Which is fair enough.  However, I think it breaks the abeyance
of the work to build puzzles around things which the protagonist
obviously would know, but that the player has to dig around
for.

For example, imagine a piece of IF in which the protagonist
is a brain surgeon.  Can you imagine a puzzle which hinges
on the player trying to figure out exactly what a drug
like diazepam does?  Sure, the player could run out in Real Life
and look it up, assuming the drug acts in the game like it
does in Real Life.  But why should she have to?  A brain
surgeon should know these things.
 
I find this obliquely related to the "teleportation" introductions
which some I-F uses, in the following sort of form:
 
"You're just walking down the street one day, minding your
 own business, when SUDDENLY, you're transported to a 
 mind-boggling world for no reason whatsoever."

This, I think, perhaps errs on the other side:  it assumes
the protagonist knows nothing about his world, much like
the player.

Perhaps these are just petty points...


Roger Carbol // uq775@freenet.Victoria.BC.CA // hello, floyd

